Cable Technology Feature Article

Super Bowl 2013 Was the Most Connected Yet

Super Bowl XLVII was, obviously, a huge event for television – it was aired on CBS — but there were plenty of ways to view or listen to the event other than in the living room. Indeed, this may have been the most connected Super Bowl yet, with the game being streamed online at CBSSports.com, which actually offered several streams for viewers with different camera angles, stats and Twitter (News - Alert) comments.

For those who weren't even in the house, the NFL's mobile app for iOS and Android had you covered with a mobile device, but only for those with an NFL Game Pass subscription. Meanwhile, on the radio, the official Super Bowl broadcast, courtesy of Dial Global Sports, featured play-by-plays from Kevin Harlan and color commentary by Boomer Esiason, with stations in Baltimore — WIYY and WBAL — and San Francisco — KSAN-FM and KNBR — also carrying the game.

For those less interested in the game and more in the commercials, there are a handful of sites featuring all of the expensive, high-profile advertisements for viewing.

Of course, it's not an event anymore without commentary and live tweeting from Twitter, which Super Bowl XLVII had in spades, with plenty of reactions to the Baltimore Ravens' Joe Flacco being dubbed Most Valuable Player due largely to his spectacular first-half performance. As the Ravens' official Twitter account pointed out, Flacco is now the sixth player in NFL history to throw three touchdowns in the first half of a Super Bowl.

But perhaps the most-talked-about part of the game was the power outage that occurred in the third quarter. The half-hour-long outage accounted for more messages than any other part of the Super Bowl, with 231,500 tweets per minute being sent during the blackout, putting it well above any other moment during the game — the Ravens winning only hit a rate of 183,000 tweets per minute, by comparison.

Hours after the outage, an official statement was released that revealed a malfunction with electrical monitoring equipment was the culprit.

Technology innovations are continuing to impact major events, such as the Super Bowl, and the way the public can view and interact with them. Mobile devices, apps, features and real-time social media commentary are only the beginning.